Plomb Dans la Tête

I approached this thinking — with an imperfect knowledge of French expressions — that this would translate into English as “Bullet in the Head,” since the word-for-word translation is “Lead in the Head” and it featured burly men with guns on the cover. Looking into that expression, in French, has given me an experience a bit like this graphic novel by Colin Wilson (of Blueberry fame) and Matz did — some preconceptions shattered, some pleasant surprises, and a slow nod of understanding.

The graphic novel starts like something called “Bullet in the Head” should start, anyway. It’s buddy crooks versus buddy cops: two killers, mandated to assassinate a senatory, destined to butt heads with the two policement assigned to the case, with some reporters friendly to one of the officers on the periphery.

And it’s straight-to-DVD, Steven-Seagal-worthy material at first. Matz is, as we’ve seen with Le Tueur, a dab hand at crackling dialogue, and fans of the U.S. series 100 Bullets could do far worse than to track his work down with a translator close at hand. But even the zippy dialogue can’t really put more than a coat of paint over some crippling Central Casting characters and story: the fastidious $2000-shoes killer and his pragmatic associate; the hot-headed cop and his level-headed partner. The killers are killing; the cops are, well, being cops.

Matz, to his credit, keeps a steady hand on the till, delivering a perfectly servicable cops-and-killers story that starts in New York (the prime location for any mediocre cop fiction, especially when written by people from beyond North America — at this point, there must be more fictional New York cops and hoods than there are real New Yorkers) and then traverses to one of the other Great Stereotypes of American-set crime fiction, New Orleans (close rival: Los Angeles).

The version of Plomb that I’ve been reading is L’Intégral — all three volumes of the series, bound up in 66% format. And thank God for that, because Matz, in a ballsy move, doesn’t pull his Interesting Twist until midway through the second volume. I doubt I would have proceeded past Vol. 1 if I were picking it up normally, and when the sudden swing in the plot comes, it comes fast and furious.

Suddenly, halfway through the second book, things get a lot more interesting.

“Mettre du plomb dans la tête” is, according to my (Quebec) French co-workers, to make somebody more serious — you can also describe somebody who is a bit ditzy as lacking “plomb dans la tête.”

So I think Matz is indulging in some clever punning, there — two of the book’s protagonists are forced to adopt a different and arguably more serious-minded attitude about the way the world works as the story unfolds, and there is no shortage of lead projectiles finding their ways into a variety of craniums.

It seems to be referred to in English as “Headshot,” and has been optioned by Warner Brothers, and there was/is/will be a translated version coming out from Casterman.

The art is… clear. I know that sounds like damning with faint praise, and I don’t mean to, as it’s immaculate and well-rendered and sells everything it needs to sell. But (and Matz needs to absorb some blame here, as he’s a twelve-panel, 1600-word-per-page writer) there’s nothing that stands out here. It’s all good — rock-solid adherence to character, some interesting design ideas (especially for the character of Slide and the *SPOIILER* weirdly clonelike figure that assassinates him), but nothing here goes above and beyond standard fare, and there is a copout on the very last page that annoyed the hell out of me. Whether that sourced from Matz or Wilson, I do not know.

Wilson’s an old pro, and certainly doesn’t need my praise for validation. But compared to, say, Jacomon (Matz’s partner on Tueur) this seems a lot more paint-by-numbers and a lot less interesting.

Recommend it? Heck yes — but now I feel like I’ve oversold the way the story shifts in the middle. It’s not like a Dusk Till Dawn “HOLY CRAP VAMPIRES” turnaround or anything, just some nice spins that accelerate a pretty ho-hum cop thriller (Polar) in an interesting direction.

Solid work, regardless. Well worth checking out.

Filed under: Bande Dessinée, Reviews by Shepherd